Mark Galli, senior managing editor of Christianity Today, responds to the report that 31 pastors endorsed a candidate from their pulpits this past Sunday in an article entitled Tempted by Politics: Why many pastors want to, but shouldn’t, endorse candidates . You can read the entire article by clicking HERE.
Here is a quote from the conclusion that I thought was excellent:
For the next five weeks, the priests of political religions will be pandering for tithes and votes from anyone who can breathe, even evangelicals. They will be playing on their fears and manipulating their hopes. Is it too much to ask that for one hour, out of the other 168 given to us in a week, that another point of view be accorded equal time?
For that one hour, instead of joining the American political chorus and naming our choice for the next prince, perhaps we should be preaching from the prophet Isaiah:
Do you not know? Do you not hear?
Has it not been told you from the beginning?
Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth?
It is [God] who sits above the circle of the earth,
and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers;
who stretches out the heavens like a curtain,
and spreads them like a tent to dwell in;
who brings princes to nothing,
and makes the rulers of the earth as emptiness. Isaiah 40:21-23:
Pastors are right about this much: The election season is a unique moment in a church’s life, but not because the pastor has the chance to lobby for his candidate. No, the Christian preacher has the unparalleled opportunity to act as the only sane person in a nation mad for power, the only voice in an ephemeral season filled with lies and half-lies to speak abiding truths — that elections (even "the most important in a generation") come and go, that princes (even "the most gifted in a lifetime") appear and pass away, that nations (even "the greatest in history") rise and fall.
And that something greater remains after the first Tuesday in November.
